food to glow

Yesterday I asked you to indulge me in a little meditation exercise of sorts. We wandered around imaginary gardens and restaurants, noting colour, texture, taste and aroma. We sniffed, we tasted, we digested, we were omniscient. With my subtle-as-a-sledgehammer sketches I was hoping to lead us to think about what we get out of our food. I admit that it was pretty crudely drawn, but I hope you know it was from the heart.

Nothing quite so earnest today, you’ll be glad to know. Today it is a straight up, simple-as treatment for a much under-sung spring vegetable, the spring onion (this link tells us the difference between all of the lovely long alliums). This is a vegetable I for one think nothing much about as I duly sling a bunch into my cart every week. It is one of those background ingredients that we may acknowledge are very useful but never get too excited about. It is an onion for goodness sake.

But I recently saw a tiny snippet in April’s Bon Appetit that saw me head straight for my fridge. Right in the fold of a page was just the merest mention of “Buttermilk Fried Ramps.” No nicely-shot image to tempt; just the words ‘buttermilk’, ‘fried’ and ‘ramps’ in close proximity. That was enough for me. Ramps (wild garlic) are now past their best (boo) but I thought I might try to riff on this basic idea and make a  crunchy, almost “bloomin’ onion” snack with my humble bunch of spring onions. But not fried, and not with buttermilk. And with Japanese flavours rather than the southern comfort approach Bon App suggests. Luckily, it worked. Boy howdy, it worked. Four batches in a row, worked.

So far no crunchy spring onion has made it to a table. In truth I don’t think we have even eaten them sitting down (bad food to glow). Like kale crisps, these crunchy little alliums skip the middle man option of a plate, disappearing from the baking tray and straight into the wasabi-lime mayo. A lovely little snack or appetizer, to make on a whim, to use up spring onions, or as part of a planned meal. Seriously addictive.

Make double.

Oh, and if you want to share your own vegetarian creations, why not link up with UK home decoration specialists Bettaliving using the hashtag #bettaveggies? Follow/tweet to @bettaliving to participate. Or leave your ideas and links on their dedicated National Vegetarian Week page.

Disclosure: This recipe is a sponsored post.

I’m popping this easy, no-waste recipe over to Elizabeth’s for her always-interesting No Waste Challenge. And over to Elizabeth and Ren for Simple & In Season.